Pregnant women -- Prayer books and devotions -- German -- Early works to 1800.

Childbirth -- Religious aspects -- Christianity.

Pregnancy -- Religious aspects -- Christianity.

Abstract:

While most devotional texts created by (male) theologians and pas
tors for pregnant women to recite daily and during labor in early modern
Lutheran Germany probably augmented women's fears about
childbirth and perhaps even enhanced their physical suffering in the
name of spiritual "improvement," the texts one woman supplied had a
very different tone and likely a different effect. Aemilie Juliane
von Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt (1637-1706) replaced the female persona men
manufactured with a woman's own voice, and in so doing, she replaced a
latently misogynistic, patriarchal theology in the context of childbirth
with a practical theology of maternal empathy. Close reading of Aemilie
Juliane's texts in her devotional handbook for pregnant women and
comparison with those authored by men illuminate the gendered nature of
the orthodox theological approach to pregnancy and childbirth and make
a quietly dissenting (female) voice better known to historians.

In a week of street battles in 1871, the French army slaughtered
approximately 25,000 participants of the revolutionary civil war known
as the Paris Commune. Two prominent feminist and socialist activists,
Paule Mink and André Léo, managed to escape to safety,
each subsequently working to reassert her individual ideological
position. Prior to the Commune, both women wrote and spoke publicly,
challenging gender and class hierarchies and the power of the Church. In
the revolutionary aftermath, Léo continued to champion democratic
socialism, whereas Mink began advocating radical, authoritarian
revolutionism, abandoning her moderate socialist roots. Léo
published literary and theoretical works and participated in internal
socialist politics, maintaining such a low public profile that, although
she lived and wrote until 1900, the Paris police ceased monitoring her
by 1880. In contrast, Mink traveled ceaselessly, speaking publicly,
advocating violent revolution. Considering Mink a greater threat, police
spies monitored her until her 1901 death. Through different strategies
in the aftermath of the Commune, each woman exemplified a strand of
the multiple and complex feminist socialisms in the late nineteenth
century.

The article traces the evolution of imagery depicting the activities of
Aida Lafuente, a young woman who took up arms to fight on behalf of the
insurrection during the Spanish revolution of October 1934. Following
the revolt, pro-revolutionary writers, poets, and politicians sought
to commemorate her activities. This article argues that commentators
resorted to conventional images of women in war in order to counteract
the unsettling notion of a woman warrior. In doing so, revolutionary
memories transformed Lafuente from an authentic woman warrior into a
symbol of purity and motherhood. Despite her radical actions in both a
political and gendered sense, memories of Lafuente served ultimately to
reinforce traditional notions of proper gender behavior.

Beginning in the late nineteenth century, a spate of cookbooks
and household management guides appeared that were intended to assist
British women in running their households in India. In this article, the
author argues that these texts constructed a new approach to imperial
domesticity. Rather than mimicking the labor-intensive approach to
household management common in the metropole, British women in India
adopted a "hands-off" approach to housekeeping that allowed them to devote
their attentions to other pursuits, including the work of empire.

Women teachers -- United States -- Political activity -- History -- 1913-1921.

Abstract:

In the World War I era, U. S. public schools became a battleground
in the struggle over militarism in American society. Preparedness
advocates and many physical education teachers pressed for military
training in the public schools. Peace educators and teacher activists,
predominantly female organizers for the American School Peace League
(ASPL), strongly opposed it. This article highlights the centrality
of gender politics in the struggle and the role of local classroom
teachers. Teachers in the campaign against military training were
part of a new, more radical trend in the U. S. peace movement in the
1910s. They were often at odds with the ASPL's conservative national
leader, Fannie Fern Andrews. Teacher-activists developed a significant
critique of militarism and its impact on children, and built diverse and
effective community coalitions. They based their political authority not
on maternalism but on professional identity. This study suggests that a
full account of women's political culture in the early twentieth century
demands closer attention to the activities of female teachers.

This article reveals, for the first time, the "humorous article"
read by Lucretia Mott at the historic 1848 Seneca Falls Women's Rights
Convention. Written by Mott's sister Martha Coffin Wright, it presents a
view of the gender roles in marriage very different from that expressed
in most literature of its time.